Phonological development and acquiring of words = imitation playing a part

Children develop regional accents showing they imitate sounds around them

They pick up words and "parrot" them as they acquire a vocabulary

All children pass through the same stages of language development regardless of the tope and amount of adult reinforcement they receive

There would be more variation between children if this theory was accurate

Cannot acquire grammar through imitation and have not been encouraged to make mistakes.

They can produce orginial sentences - they aren't limited to sentences they have heard

They discover the priniciples and generate new utterances

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NATIVISM - Chomsky (1965)

Overview

Children have an innate ability to extract the rules underlying language from the words they hear

When the brain is exposed to speech at birth it automatically begins to receive and make sense of utterance

Language Acquisition Device (LAD)

The child has to learn the rules by applying them

E.g. Sentences contain a subject, verb and objective - children possess an innate awareness of this deep structure

Evaluation

LAD explains; the speed at which children learn to speak, children of all cultures pass through similar stages, existence of grammatical features are common to all languages and children understand and use new sentences without hearing them before

CRITICAL DEVELOPMENT PERIOD - Lenneberg

A Critical Development Period within which a child must be exposed to language for him/her to develop normally.

A child must acquire the basics of langue through human interaction by the time he/she reaches puberty.

Occasional cases of wild (feral) children who have been deprived of normal contact with humans and have therefore never acquired a language.

Discovered at a young age and have rapidly caught up on language development

Cases discovered as teenagers, rarely manage more than a few odd words, even in the face of intensive training.

Genie: 13 yrs old, 1970's. Parents hadn't spoken to her and had punished her if she made a sound. She was denied social contact and despite years of teaching she never grasped the grammar the even a normal 5 year old uses.

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COGNITION - Piaget (1896-1980)

Stages in language acquisition are said to be linked to stages in cognitive development.

Children can only use a certain linguistic structure when they understand the concept involved.

Object Permanence

The ability to recognise that objects have an existence independent of the child's interaction with them.

Before this, children believe that an object does not exist when it can't be seen

Develops during first year but is not complete until 18 months - sharp increase in child's vocab at this time.

Classification

Child's ability to classify objects and actions.

Once a child can classify, they are ready to divide words into linguistic categories.

The 'ordering' of language prepares for sentence construction.

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COGNITION - Piaget (cont.)

Seriation

The ability to arrange objects, such as stories, in order or in size.

When children can't do this, they describe objects as 'long' or 'short' but children who are aware of seriation can use comparative terms, 'longer' and 'shorter'

A size judgement is a conceptual skill and the child's cognitive development must be mature to be able to do this.

Evaluation

Studies conducted on children who's mental development is retarded but still speak fluently.

A child's ability to grasp grammar and sentence structure is independent of cognitive development.

Neglects language as communication e.g. relationships

Further Research

Vigotsky; emergence of linguistic skills has an effect on cognition.

cause and effect are difficult to determine as the two abilities appear to develop in parallel

Through language children may make faster cognitive discoveries about family relationships

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INPUT - Bruner (1970's)

Overview

Stress the role of interaction in the development of language

In particular the interaction that takes place between children and parents - 'Motherese' or 'Caretaker speech' - Child directed speech

Language acquisition depends on the input made by parents

How adults alter speech when talking to children:

Parents speak more slowly - use simplified constructions and less complex vocab - easier for child to imitate parents

Parents expand the child's speech

Introduce new words by using familiar sentence frames

New word is highlights as the rest of the sentence is familiar

Conventions of conversation: turn taking, question and answer, assisting with pragmatic development

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INPUT - Bruner (cont.)

A Question of Terminology

Researches were concerned with the language mothers used towards children.

Mothers and fathers were not always the main/significant adult in a child's life

Similar patterns in the language used by adults, some differences

Fathers are more demanding than mothers, using more direct questions and wider vocab.

Phonology

Slower, clearer pronunciation - language more accessible.

More pauses - give child opportunity to absorb what is said and to respond

Not possible to identify the links between structures parents use and their appearance in their child's language.

Difficult to be certain about what has cause an advance to the next stage in development.

Not essentinal that adults address children in a particular way

Other contexts; lovers, pets, carers and elderly people

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EARLY PRAGMATIC DEVELOPMENT

Pragmatics is the study of the part that language plays in social situations and relationships.

Del Hymes: "communicative competence" - developing all the skills associated with conversation; when to speak and be silent, how to respond to others, which register to use and what functions language is used for.

Even before they say anything that sounds like a word, babies know utterances work for them in a number of ways.

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FUNCTIONS OF CHILDREN'S LANGUAGE

Michael Halliday identified seven functions that language has for children in their early years and David Crystal added another two.

A cry can be instrumental. A smile can be interactional/personal and a bawl can be regulatory.

Routine events (feeding, bathing) are accompanied by language.

Bancroft (1996): 'Peek-a-Boo' has several parallels with a typical conversation; turn taking, participants respond to each other, common purpose and sequence and it's enjoyable.

In the early stages, the adult begins the exchanged, then the child takes more control initiating games like 'Peek-a-Boo'

PHONOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT

Before Birth:

Within the womb, the child can hear and detect rhythm.

A Chinese embryo can detect pitch rhythm of the oriental language, a French embryo can detect the syllable timing of French and an English baby detects the distinguishable sounds of stress-timed rhythm.

HARMONISING: when one consonant or vowel becomes the same e.g. dog becomes dod or gog

By the age of 3 the child can use almost all the vowels and twice as many consonants - words like elephant are accurate.

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LEXICAL AND SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT

The learning of words is the most noticeable feature of the early months of language acquisition.

Between 12 and 18 months an infant has a vocab of about 50 words and by the age of two has a command of about 200 words.

Although these words may be said correctly, this does not know the child has grasped all meanings of these words.

Helen Benedict (1979): a child on average learns about 10 new words a month and will actively use them and they can understand 22 new words a month. A child understands five times as many words as they are capable of producing in 18 months.

Katherine Nelson: 18 children's first 50 words and following patterns: they have little concept of time and talk about the present, they build rapid vocab in semantic fields (relationships, food, humans, clothes, vehicles and their noises, animals, toys, household objects, body parts, properties, actions, personal/social greetings and situational words).

Errors occur when trying to work out the meanings of words: Over-Extension: word is given a broader meaning, Categorical Extension: over-extends on the basis of similar features e.g. anything with four legs is a cat, Analogical Extension: similarities in the uses of the object (anything holding liquid is a cup), Under-Extension: word is given a narrower meaning, Mismatch: no apparent basis for non-standard use of word

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LEXICAL AND SEMANTIC DEVELOPMENT (cont.

Jean Aitchison (1987): identified three stages that occur during a child's acquisition of vocab

Labelling: first stage, making the link between the sounds of particular words and the objects to which they refer e.g. understanding 'mummy' refers to the child's mother

Packaging: understanding a word's range of meaning. Under-extension and over-extension occur before this stage is successful

Network Building: grasping the connection between words, understanding some words are opposite in meaning

Gardner (1975): child's ability to use language figuratively.

Suffixing: children appear to know instinctively that an 's' inflection makes the plural in English. They soon realise generally '-ed' is the ending required to form the past tense. A child learns from word formation rule - there are some exceptions e.g. mouses, mans, fell/falled, breaked.

Prefixes: A child can make a word negative by grasping prefixes/suffixes. They can make anegative by adding 'un' or 'dis'

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GRAMMATICAL DEVELOPMENT

Syntax; One Word Stage; One word utterances, occasionally more than one word will appear but the phrase will be used a single unit. 60% of words used at this time have a naming function and will develop into nouns. 20% express actions and develop into verbs. One word utterances convey sentences, parents rely on context to understand. (HOLOPHRASES)

Two Word Stage; 18 months old, until the child develops syntactic component, the creativity and flexibility of language cannot be developed. Highly dependent on context and situation. Sometimes the words are brought together but the sequence is not uttered a single rhythmical unit - meaning is made but there is no fluency.

Imitation: When a child repeats what an adult says, they omit words, but those that are retained will usually be in an appropriate grammatical order.

Telegraphic Stage: Age 2+, three and four word utterances. Some will be grammatically complete but will convey the message at its most economical without appropriate grammatical words and word endings. Questions, commands and statements are used and different clause patterns are evident. Rapid progress.

David Crystal: non-fluency is bound to occur as the child copes with new skills. The repetition is not a speech defect, it is merely thinking time.

Sorting of grammatical errors at about 4yrs old - irregularities of syntax/morphology are being mastered and sentences are co-ordinated.

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LEARNING TO READ

Baker and Freebody ('89): Written to Spoken Language; spoken does not take up physical space, whereas written does (moving from left to right and top to bottom), line break in writing so not affect meaning, pauses in spoken language do affect meaning, written language is repeatable in exact form, it is permanent, non-interactive (won't respond to questions).

Harris and Coltheart ('86): Learning to Read; Stage One: Whole Word Stage, children recognise written words as a whole and are not aware of their internal orthographic structure e.g. know the shape of the letters make up their name but don't recognise separate letters.

Stage Two; Discrimination Net: beginning to pay attention to orthography, when faced with an unfamiliar word, not in their sight vocab, they are likely to base their judgement on similarities between words they do know.

Stage Three; Phonological Recoding: extensive use is made of letter to sound correspondences and "sounding out" words. Necessary for decoding words that have never been encountered before - knowledge of letter to sound correspondences needed.

Stage Four; Orthographic Stage: where words are recognised directly from their spelling rather than by sound. much faster and less labourious than sounding them out.